I analyse. I write. I share.

This recording was first introduced to me during a music course I have been taking this year, where Jazz and it's importance regarding the black civil rights movement in the 60s in North America, and as a form of artistic freedom of expression played  a leading role.

I post this at a time of great injustice and sorrow, not only for the lamentable and despicable taking of Michael Brown's life by an agent of the state (and the subsequent shambles of a judicial process), but for the continued injustice our world faces at the hands of powerful white men.

This performance is a protest piece. At a time where Jazz was disregarded as mindless primitive noise, these artists put together a piece carefully constructed to convey the anger and frustration felt by the African-American population at the time. Shamefully, this sentiment is still relevant and a reality. The vocals feature no lyrics- conveying the raw sentiment felt by many, when the extent to which a state will allow heartless oppression leaves a person speechless. Ms.Lincoln purposefully wore her hair naturally (un-straightened), and wore african-inspired jewellery and clothes. I will refrain from putting too much of my own analysis to it, for fear of misconstruing its intention, and also because it quite clearly communicates for itself.

So why so much flack?

He is condemned by so many people who rather than discounting his political strategies, seem to just have a total aversion to him, like a dog with a snake's body or something. I think, rather than this being because he is genuinely abnormal and repulsive to people, he is repulsive to many people's consciousness created by our monotonous media. He is sitting on the news night armchair, his very body language is different, no stiff back, no suit and tie, no fancy socks, no calculated cues of gestures to convey that a politician is ''just like you''- and this is abnormal to a mind so accustomed to the same thing decade after decade. I would take the liberty of saying that people's aversion to Russell Brand is less about what they actually think of his views or motives, and more to do with the fact that he speaks of very complex issues in a way facilitates the realisation that you can be responsible for your society's future. We are listening, for the first time in my life at least, to a person in a formal political setting telling us we can change our political system. He isn't saying vote for me I will keep the status quo, he's saying 'wake up, become conscious and take positive action!' It's like listening to someone say ''you can change the colour of the sky if you want to'' to most people because the idea that we may deconstruct the establishment, the ruling class has an onus on US, THE PEOPLE.

About the don't vote thing... It seems you can't say 'Russell Brand' without saying 'don't vote', in the media today. On every program or article I have come across mentioning Brand, it is almost as if the argument goes along the lines of ''yes the establishment is stealing from the poor, and impeding positive representation, and it's really bad BUT HE SAID DON'T VOTE! The establishment ridicules the idea of agents rejecting the options given to them if they do not suit them (i.e. voting in the same ruling class, whichever the party), because if enough of the proletariat realised this fact, it would be in big, big trouble. Bigger than the amount of tax Amazon owes. Brand didn't tell people not to vote, he told people not to vote for a system that, regardless of its colours, does not represent its majority, or benefit it. 

What is also interesting about the media's representation of Brand is how text-book Folk Devils and Moral Panics it is. Brand presents a form of resistance to the establishment, the media outcry brands (pun intended) him a fool, a clown, a person you should hide from your children lest they become strongly and eloquently disillusioned with the political system that is destroying their planet and encroaching on their rights and opportunities. Like the rockstar that only makes 'noise' and encourages your teenagers to have sex take drugs and drink to excess, the media remind you of his past, remind you of his personal struggles not, I might add, how he overcame these and how he draws positive outcomes from this past (he sponsors a rehab clinic in  town I lived in, Focus12).

Interestingly, many of Brand's accomplishments are removed from him and fed back to him condescendingly in interviews. In this particular interview, the presenter refers to his having engendered political discussion amongst 'us ' (a direct opposite to what the media said his views on voting would do) as an ironic outcome to what he initially said. Brand knew exactly what he was saying, and a lot of people have felt the same for a very long time about politicians, but nobody in that News Night seat has every said it before.

Brand is important to me as a sociologist and as a role model. For the first time in my life, there is someone talking about politics in my accent and from a similar background to mine whom is not in my kitchen and related to me. He, like me, isn't the stereotypical working class person you see in the media. He is articulate, engaging, passionate, eloquent and educated, and that is why the establishment can't try hard enough to taint his image and twist his words to frame him in a particular way.

To take a purely Marxist approach, and maybe a nice little bit of Hall based on his 1970s analysis of how the media implement 'divide and rule' strategy- Russel Brand is the ruling class' nightmare. He is that member of the working class that made it and didn't turn his back on the rest of the working class (''The working class can kiss my arse, I've got the foreman's job at last!'' Red Flag).  He is in a position of power and influence and is using it in a way which does not compute with the overarching ruling class ideology of our society. As he rather astutely points out, even those in the position of gruelling our political representatives and exposing their true values and actions, the presenters of the BBC inadvertently work for the establishment every time they take take this line of ridiculing and patronising him for believing he is worthy of opening our eyes to the view that capitalism doesn't work, and we, the people, can change it. They separate him as a freak, a silly gobby childish fool who has let his position allow him to have delusions of grandeur, so that we do not want to identify with him and what he is saying- because that is the only stance that is possible to take. That or that ill-researched stance taken which argues that he told everyone not to vote ever, again, amen and is thus an anarchist and wants everything to crumble, for a laugh. 

This blog will be based around the ideas of Lockwood, whom (going against the grain for his time) based his work around Marxism. In short, Karl Marx made some predictions about our society today which have in many ways come to be reality. As Lockwood notes, Marx foretold of a proletarianisation spreading beyond the factory gates. 

As we know, the working class of Britain, and most of Europe, through industrialisation were victims of this process through the creation of repeated, mechanical anonymous labour and impersonal employer-employee relationships. With this process we saw the clear cut creation of social strata, working class (blue collar), middle class (white collar) and upper class (ruling class, bourgeoisie). Now, however, with the decline of manual labour and the increased number of office workers in very similar conditions to those factory workers from the days of old, where do we make the distinction? Are all individuals carrying out repetitive semi or low-skilled tasks to be working class now? Or are they all middle class because they now are the white collar workers, the office clerks? Was Blair right? Are we all middle class now?

Although it is clear to see a homogenisation of the workplace across occupations; all workplaces are subject to a plethora of imposed directives such as pay brackets, regulations on breaks, health and safety, worker-customer interactions, food standards etc. It is rather simplistic to assume this erases all cultural capital associated with being middle class. Being a call-centre salesperson  in an office (although low in skill-set or qualifications) in business attire acquires more cultural capital than being a labourer on a building site. More importantly, this esteem is often self proclaimed. There is push to be middle class and respectable now, as epitomised in much of the political rhetoric of our time. ''Don't be working-class and strive for change for your own people, accept a small change in your work environment and be a middle class hard working family member'' Lockwood and Goldthorpe tend to look at this process of change as less of an assimilation of the working class to the middle class, and more of a convergence, like two lines crossing at a certain point. They argue that the point of convergence is not class, but the privatisation of their lives. They share an adherence to a private, "home-centred existence where the joys of consumption or newly acquired gadgets and private family life become more important than class struggles and the expression of collective sentiments or interests in the public domain".

To shave (or wax, or thread, or pluck, or laser, machine pluck, sugar, apply weird smelly cream) or not to shave?

I remember the first time I looked at the hair on my legs and thought 'eurgh'. It was because another girl in my class who read a LOT of magazines (you know, the ones with unobtainable beauty standards in them) showed me her silky smooth Dove advert legs. I looked at hers, then mine, and thought I didn't look normal. I was about ten.

At ten, I didn't question why I had to shave my legs, why I suddenly thought my body, which goes along doing what it does irrespectively of what you think it should do, was all of a sudden wrong. I didn't realise that it was the beauty industry making ridiculous amounts of money off me and all of my female peers buying hair removal cream at the age of ten for the rest of our lives, coupled with patriarchal desires to keep women in a perpetual state of childhood and innocence making me look at my body in disgust. I thought (ironically) that it was me becoming a woman.

It wasn't until about seven years later, in a sociology class, that I questioned this for the first time. In an exercise we had to consider the media coverage of Julia Roberts when she received her Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture Actress for her part in Notting Hill. Instead of commenting on this milestone in her career, the media went ape about her having armpit hair. We all thought 'EURGH! GOD, DISGUSTING!' in the beginning. Oh! How brainwashed I was. But then, my disgust turned to sheer introspective guilt at realising that I, a feminist from my first breath, was changing my body for patriarchy. For the first time I considered why I was doing this taken-for-granted activity which is aligned with every woman's hygiene. I thought, waaaait a minute. If a boy hasn't shaved his legs in P.E, he doesn't get ridiculed, because there would be no legitimacy to it- boys are hairy. But I'm hairy, or at least I would be if I didn't shave...

So faced with the existential angst of having the choice now,the choice of conforming to a standard, what the bloody hell do I do with that choice? Consider: do I even have a choice? Is it a choice when you're open to criticism for doing it? Is it a choice when people will most definitely label you as dirty, one of those angry feminists who act so unnecessarily, or just plain unwomanly? Yes. To not conform may not be easy (I mean, when is it? Really?) but the more people who chose not to conform the easier it will become. Conversely, it's important to consider another scenario. Imagine by some miracle every single woman realised that the reason they feel they must shave is due to societal standards of beauty and gender-roles and double standards and all that stuff. They now feel that they must not shave in order to be what is truly womanly.  Is this because we've realised the growth of body hair is a sign of sexual maturity, or also because we are acting against a label? Is it a choice if we are only doing it because we've been told not to? Here comes the 'boom'.

It came to me the other day. Why do we look at the existence of  hair on a woman's body as actively rebellious? It's not like getting a tattoo, where you decide on what image you wish to represent you and have it put on your body, it just grows, as easily as breathing, we grow hair. It's just there, the only time we actively do anything to it, is actually when we get rid of it.

Julia Roberts was asked why she had armpit hair, Hugh Grant wasn't. The problem is not necessarily that people should play with how their body looks, it is that only women are expected to do so to suit a certain standard. Also, I can't help but find a problem with standards of women's attractiveness being aligned with making them appear to be pre-pubescent. It smacks of sexualisation of young girls.

During our Sociology Fundamentals class at Edinburgh University, we were asked to do a rough poll on the referendum for Scottish independence. Although this was a while ago in ''internet years'' (is that a thing? I'll make it a thing) it will probably benefit me to write from a calmer more acclimatised state of mind. 

Anyone following the debate throughout will know it was INCREDIBLY close throughout- you couldn't call it. Our rough poll was pretty much the same. The question was " What are you going to vote in the referendum?" My own results were:

Yes (8)    Of which   female (3)     male     (5)    Nationalities regardless of gender and self-ascribed: Scottish, Danish, Irish, British, English and Greek

No (7)      Of which   female (6)     male     (1)    Nationalities regardless of gender and self-ascribed: British, German/English, Scottish and UK.

Undecided (1)         female (1)     male      (0)   Nationalities regardless of gender and self-ascribed: UK

Not voting (10)        female(7)      male (3)        Nationalities regardless of gender and self-ascribed: Nepalese, Polish, Chinese (Hong Kong), US, French

Quite clearly, the stratification is a bit slap-dash. Had this been a more pre-meditated organised poll I would have had a more qualified description of the person; meaning for each individual I would note the age, gender, ethnicity, nationality and whether they were able to vote (in the case where they could not vote I would ask them what they would vote if they could). 

Upon carrying out he poll I did not expect gender to have such an effect on the vote. On the No side, there is a clear slant with 6 females and only 1 male. I would have thought that considering the Yes campaign planned for improved childcare provision, that more women if not most would have voted Yes. As we know, childcare provision is a great obstacle when it comes to women's careers due to gender role socialisation and pay gap. However, it is possible that the No campaign's "think of your children" (we all know that advert featuring a mum with her cuppa don't we?) approach would have played rather effectively on that gender role socialisation of women and therefore contributed to more voting no in my poll- as voting Yes would be associated with not caring about their families' future.

Nationality was also a key feature in the voting decisions. It was interesting to see the difference in self-ascription of nationality between the Scots, the Brits, the 'UK's and the 'UK for now's. The conflict between identities was most prominent for the Scots, as those voted no felt they must really pinpoint the fact that they were Scots, and they were voting No. Arguably because voting No was associated with less pride in Scottish nationality and more of an emotional investment in the UK. One participant that particularly stuck in my mind was an older lady, who in reply to "what are you going to vote in the referendum?" said :"I am a Scot and I am voting No." The Yes voters, however did not mention their nationality until asked specifically to provide it- whether English, Scottish or Danish etc. 

It is thought-provoking to see from this rough poll, how much people's identity was used as a tool for putting across arguments. From the No campaign we can see aspects of female identity, however biased and dated, such as the mother role, being used to gain a vote from women. This feature frustrates me as a feminist and as a woman. It pains me that a political organisation made a campaign aimed specifically at me (an aspiring university student with plans for a career and a family), using simplified  language, and only let my imagination go as far as the four walls of my kitchen and my thoughts as far as my husband and children. Literally. Take a look at the advert here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLAewTVmkAU .

Similarly, it is interesting to see how important identity was to those Scots voting 'No'. During the lead up to the campaign there were a lot of posters with messages along the lines of 'I love Scotland, that's why I'm voting No'. Many people (in my own experience) associated Scot pride with the Yes vote and extreme nationalism, and a No vote with more pro-London identities, however since the aftermath of the referendum (the unionist demonstrations in George Square, Glasgow) perhaps this was a misconception. It was those nationalists (albeit British nationalists rather than specifically Scottish) whom demonstrated that ignorant stance often attributed to the stereotypical Old Scot. It is an established criticism that the No campaign preyed on the emotions of the electorate more than showing what they actually had to offer in the way of power to the Scottish people. 

This is not to say that there was no emotion in the Yes camp. When I read the results I rolled over in my bed and did not want to get up.  I saw the options offered by the Yes campaign to be competitive with the rest of the European Union, more so than the politics of Westminster. I wanted to see the 14th wealthiest nation spread its funds amongst its people. I wanted more childcare for the future careers of the women and girls of Scotland. I wanted to see humanitarian aid for the people of Palestine instead of funding arms for Israel. I wanted renewable energy. None of my reasons began with 'I am from... and I am voting yes', although I am from a place where the Scottish referendum has a great effect (Catalunya). My emotion was sheer disappointment. The feeling of being so close to something great, a change for better and losing it.